


Our old subtle foe

by gatty



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sad Peter Parker, Sort Of, Whump, for a given value of fixing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-02-15 18:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatty/pseuds/gatty
Summary: **ENDGAME SPOILERS**The world was saved.But then it wasn't.When the Avengers left on earth can't fix things, there's only one person left to turn to. The person they've always turned to: Tony Stark. Only that's not such an easy option any more.Peter volunteers to travel to the afterlife to find him. Because he's not sure how to do this - and of this - without him.





	1. Chapter 1

I run to death, and death meets me as fast,

And all my pleasures are like yesterday,

I dare not move my dim eyes any way,

Despair behind, and death before doth cast

Such terror.

 

 - John Donne,  _Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?_ (Holy Sonnet 35)

 

 

* * *

 

 

There is one thing Peter knows to be true: time doesn’t care.

It doesn’t heal. It doesn’t grant wisdom. It follows rules both fixed and arbitrary. It cannot grow love or dull hate. It is inevitable. It is changeable. But it does not care about anyone or thing. 

Time is worth nothing. And it is worth everything. 

It is time for breakfast. May has set out on the table cereal, juice, milk, toast, jelly, fruit, coffee, yoghurt, honey, and a box of pop-tarts. It is seven thirty a.m. So it is breakfast. Peter looks at the plump, dusty, dark skin of a punnet of blueberries and wonders what it means that seven in the morning must be breakfast and seven at night must be dinner. Where in nature are the hours of the day written. Trees mark time in rings, rock in layers of sediment building and building, the past held together with the present. The clouds mark it in orbits of the earth. 

Space doesn’t mark time at all. 

Time is a fiction he cannot understand.

May pours a bowl of cereal and places it in front of him, and a spoon in his hand. Peter is home from MIT for the summer and back in his old bedroom. May is back in her old routines. Together they orbit each other in fixed tracks, like figures rattling in and out of a cuckoo clock. Time and hours and minutes and seconds marked in journeys between bedroom and bathroom, locking and unlocking of doors, food heating and cooling, the rumbling of trains. 

He eats his cereal, gives May a large smile and a lie about his plans, and goes back to his room. He knows she watches him leave, face etched sharp and tired from the years of worry and grief. 

The problem is there is a gap between them.

Hope.

May had hope, and was rewarded. 

Peter has learned better than that.

In his room he dresses, packing his bag for the day. He wears his suit under his clothes. It is threadbare at the knees and elbows. The right eye display flickers, and there’s a corruption in the code that regulates temperature he just can’t seem to fix so in the height of a New York City summer he knows he will sweat himself sick.

But he has a job to do. 

As he zips up his backpack, a judder rocks through the building. At the window, he watches a small fleet of Kree raiders swoop over the elevated train tracks, skimming the roof of a passing 7 train. As he watches, something detaches from the lower chassis of the lead Kree ship, and a metal cylinder tumbles onto the train tracks, catching the morning light with a glittering wink. 

The ships swerve up and race for the atmosphere. 

Peter is already throwing himself out the window as the bomb goes off.

 

* * *

 

The ships have banked around and are diving the elevated track further down the line towards the Queensboro bridge. He knows what they’re doing: disruption, chaos, destroying infrastructure and pummelling morale. A scared population is an easy target.

Peter webslings between apartment blocks towards the trailing ship, then sends out a web in a desperate flourish. It catches the tail of the ship, yanking his arm half out of its socket and up into the sky. He hauls himself up the line and lands lightly on the metal hull. It’s more battered and patched than he realised from the ground. There’s clear recent damage pockmarking around the engine cowls and one keeps stuttering out. He shoots a web out to snatch a piece of detritus from the rubble of the bombed track, and swings it round into the failing engine. The momentum slams the concrete into the blue flare of the alien tech. Peter detaches with half a second to spare before another explosion blows him south of Queens Boulevard and spaceship entrails are scattering over his neighbourhood. Screaming from the streets reaches him over the ringing in his ears.

There are no sirens these days. 

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. Five - no four - Kree raiders bombing the Flushing line East of 42nd street. Need immediate back up.”

There’s static singing in his ear piece, and then a voice crackling through. 

“Avengers HQ one, repeat request.”

“Hope - it’s Peter. I’ve taken down one ship but there are still four Kree assholes ripping up the metro track.”

“Wanda’s already on it. Back up coming now.”

Peter goes after the four ships, reaching them as they make another dive towards the bridge itself. He sees the glinting metal tube detach and plummet down towards the cars below, but he’s still too far away. He puts on another spurt of speed, but he’s only one spidey against a fleet of alien ships. 

He can see what’s going to happen in painful detail. The bomb will take out the bridge, twisted iron spiking through the tarmac; cars that won’t have time to stop will plunge off the torn edge and into the East River, any that try to break will cause a pile up. Queens will be cut off from Manhattan for weeks, months - god knows how long it will take to rebuild. 

Just as the bomb reaches the metal frame of the bridge, a red blur wraps round it - and it’s lifting up, away from the people below. Then it rockets into the unsuspecting ships, striking the leader of the formation. It blows in midair, sending another shower of twisted metal and burning fuel cells into the water. Peter yanks himself to a halt, perching on the top of the girders to watch as Wanda descends from the heavens like wrath and fury in woman-form.

She gets in two more red-streaked strikes, hurling metal and concrete into the path of the ships - but they’re wise to her now, darting out of range to return fire. The air is full of the acrid scent of burning, and the strange, citrus-y smell of the Kree weapons. 

Peter waits for his chance, then throws up a web to latch on to a passing ship, letting the momentum pull him from his perch so he’s sailing through the air. For a moment he’s weightless, soaring over the glittering waters of the East River with a vast expanse of sky unspooling above him - and then he’s jerked short, snapping round in an arc as the ship pivots. He lands on finger and toe-top on the wing. The engine cowl is right beside him, and he wastes no time shooting a fat gob of web fluid into the engine to clog it. But this engine isn’t damaged - it makes short work of the web, burning it into ashes in seconds. 

The the ship banks sharply. The pilot has noticed his passenger. 

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” Peter is hissing under his breath, scrambling to anchor himself as the Kree pilot throws them into a tumbling series of barrel rolls and corkscrews to dislodge him. 

The world spins and he thinks he might black out - maybe he does for a second because the next thing he’s aware of is that he’s flying through open air, untethered. Letting out another curse, he throws out several desperate lengths of web, trying for anything - the ship, the twisted girders of the bridge. One catches, and he clings on. But the ship twists again, and the line falls across the billowing inferno of the engine. He watches as it eats through the narrow strip of webbing. 

And then it is gone. The line is severed and he is in free fall. 

The ship arcs up, victorious. 

Straight into the path of another. The bloom in flame, a tangled mess that drops towards the water. 

Peter will hit first. 

He wonders if this is the point he should be scared. It will hurt, hitting the river from this height. It will probably kill him. He might be unnaturally strong and quick to heal, but can’t survive everything. 

He can be snapped out of existence as quick as smacking into water. Or a finger click. 

Oh well.

Nothing is forever. 

As the frothing scum of a whitecap spatters spray across his face, he’s slammed to the side. Hands are hooked under his armpits, and he twists to see Hope dragging him along, horizontal to the water. Her gossamer wings are working overtime, nothing more than a shimmer behind her. She’s strong, but not so strong she can carry him endlessly. 

They are coming up to the pillars of the bridge, and he sees his chance to throw up another web and pull himself to safety. 

He’s going to live. 

Ok then. If that’s how it is. 

He attaches to the underside of the bridge and swings out of Hope’s grip to land lightly on the rusting metal. He gives her an enthusiastic thumbs up, and she flies up to asses the chaos on the bridge. 

Above them, he can see the final Kree raider disappearing into the atmosphere. 

Job done. 

But their work is just starting. 

“I’ve got casualties on the bridge - pile ups east and west-bound.” Hope’s voice is harsh in his earpiece. “Sitrep A1.”

“A2 report. There is structural damage to the bridge, but I have it controlled.” Peter can see Wanda still hovering above the scene, casting a red cloud around the torn bridge struts to slowly bend them away from the trapped crowds below.

“A3?”

“I’m getting survivors out now - sorry, sitrep A3. I don’t get why I’m A3. I’m your number 2! Okay that sounds a lot like I’m saying I’m a piece of dookie, scratch that - you know what I mean.”

“I can fly, insect man. I will arrive on any scene before you. So I am A2 in combat and rescue scenarios.”

“Cool, yeah, I mean I see that reasoning.”

“I am also the stronger avenger.”

“Okay, I got it!”

“My powers are more useful.”

“Cool, thanks, could we maybe reschedule crushing my self-esteem to next week?”

“No chatter on the line!” Hope cuts through. “A4, sitrep.”

Peter is hanging upside down under the bridge, staring at the plume of smoke billowing out from the Lowry Street station.

“There was another target. I’ll assess for damage and survivors.”

“Peter - wait for backup.”

“I can do it. You’re all busy here.”

Hope can’t disagree, and he knows she won’t. 

Her muttered, “fine - report in and use caution” comes when he’s already swung back over the East River and into Queens. 

His home needs him. 

 

* * *

 

In the stretch of elevated track between the 40th and 46th street stations, a hole has been blown, like a giant has reached down and scooped out track and concrete and the earth below. Both stations are intact, and empty of people, though a fire has broken out in the Lowry Street ticket office. Wreckage spills out onto Queens Boulevard on either side of the track, cars slammed into street lamps and swerved up onto sidewalks. And crushed beneath, he’s sure. 

But his immediate focus is the 7 train that was on the tracks, right behind the path of the blast. The front cars have fired off the edge and plunged into the crater below. The back two cars are still on the track. A third dangles over the edge. There is no escape to the front - the front cars have detached, leaving a dangerous drop into the carnage below. At the back, the connecting door to the next car is blocked by the broken track that’s been driven up through the floor, cutting off escape like barbed wire. 

He can hear the screaming from a block away. 

Chest burning, heart racing, he throws himself faster and further than before, arriving just in time to launch a net of webbing around the front end of the carriage to catch a woman about to fall out the torn-open door. He tracks round, firing out more webbing, anchoring the car to what stable bits of building he can find. 

Then his right cuff fails, blaring out a red light and a grinding noise. He lands, awkward, on the crumbling top of a pillar. The mechanism has jammed - it’s full of dust and grit and gummy web fluid blocking the release valve. It’s supposed to be self regulating, but the microscoping parts are decaying. He’s got his old cuffs, but they’re too basic to hook up to the suit’s AI, so he’s stuck with these ones. 

A mistake. 

He wrestles with it, frustration giving way to anger as he picks up a fist sized piece of rubble and slams it into his wrist. 

So he’s distracted when part of the track crumbles. He’s anchored too many web strands to the same damaged point and now it’s giving way.

(He can see a ferry years past, scything in half and filling up with with water.)

Crumbling builds momentum, a landslide pulling the ground from under his feet. The train car teeters on the edge - and falls.

He lunges, but his cuff is still jammed. He throws out his left hand, firing a desperate stream of web at the car and securing himself around an exposed metal bar with his other arm. The web catches, and he braces as the weight of the car hangs off his tortured shoulders. It’s pain beyond pain, a fire burning through his biceps and deltoids, wrenching ball from socket. It’s a race to see what will give first: the web or his body. He’s failing, he’s  _ failing again _ . He is too late. Too slow. Time is failing him again. There is never enough of it. He was saved for nothing, he can’t do anything. he’s not ready to be on his own he’s not  _ ready _ . At the car windows are faces, hands hammering. The screaming is so loud, too loud. He can’t tell if he’s screaming too. 

And then in a blissful, merciful second, the pain is gone. 

He opens his eyes - he doesn’t know when he screwed them closed - and wonders if he’s dropped them to their death. 

But the train is hovering in front of him - no rising, righting itself until it’s level with the track. It thunks into the back cars, shunting them back and back until there’s space for it to slip back onto the rails. His webbing hangs limp. Useless. 

And then there is peace. 

People flood from the car, scrambling back along to the 40th street station. 

Thor rises from behind the train, axe in hand and cloak snapping behind him. 

“Peter!” He gives a grin and bounds over to Peter, extending a hand. Peter takes it and lets himself to be lifted back to safety. “The spiderboy.”

“Spiderman.”

“Are you sure? You have no beard yet.”

“Yes,” Peter mumbles, though after that shitshow he’s not so sure he deserves the title.

Thor surveys the damage to the 7 line. “I saw Kree ships and thought you could use some help. I’m only sorry I arrived too late.”

“We handled it.” Peter smacks the jammed cuff again and dislodges a blob of gritty, congealed fluid. “But thanks Mr Odinson.”

“Please, call me Thor. Mr Odinson was my father. Quite literally.”

“Right, yeah. Sorry. Thor. Where, um, where are the rest of your crew?” asks Peter as they start to pick through the rubble and half-crushed cars to free survivors.

“Ah, my honorary Asgardians? Somewhere around Venus, I think. They dropped me off to report the outcome of the avengers petition to the Nova Corps.”

“In person? That doesn’t sound like it’s good news.”

Thor’s smile is fixed. “I won’t deny intergalactic politics is difficult. I rather wish my brother were here to help. This was more his field of expertise.”

Peter turns to help a shaken woman climb out from a squished Prius.

“I know how that feels.”

The walking wounded are all cleared away from the scene and finally the sound of sirens greets them. 

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder. Peter shrugs it off. 

“I’m fine.”

Thor gives him a gentle smile. “I didn’t say you weren’t.”

It’s after they’ve finished the emergency services search the rubble, when there’s no more bodies left to find and Peter’s body hurts like he deserves to, that he finally asks.

“Where do you think they are? Your family, I mean. Like, is Valhalla more of a philosophical concept or...?”

Thor stops, wiping sweat from his eyes. “Oh, Valhalla is very real. It rests on a different branch of Yggdrasil to the one we find ourselves in, but it is as real as here, or Asgard ever was. I believe - I hope - that my family are there. My people. The ones I was too late to save.”

Peter picks the grit from the cuts that have opened on his hands. “Do you think they’re happy?”

Thor doesn’t answer for a long while. “I think they are at rest.”

“Do you think they remember us?”

“Peter…” Thor shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m not sure how helpful this conversation is -”

“It’s fine. Forget it. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

The street is lined with ambulances now, a scattering of paramedics assessing the rows of casualties. There are so many people in the world. Everyone lost, for five long years, and then everyone gained. They got their people back. For better, or worse, or whatever mixed mess was made when half the world lived five years the other half would never be able to catch up. But it was the uniting experience of a generation - an entire planet’s worth of people. They lost, but they got their people back. 

So where did it leave you, if all you did was lose?  
  


 

* * *

 

It has been two years since Tony Stark gave his life to save the universe, and the universe is starting to crack. 

The loss of half the living creatures on earth had been devastating; their return was apocalyptic. The destruction and decay wrought in the snap had left just about enough resources in tact for the smaller population to cope, or so Peter has read, but with three and a half billion people showing up overnight, the fragile structures of society tilted and split. The fallen returned to find their old lives five years dead. Their loss mourned, their friends and family moved on. Food and fuel rationing came in just in time to avert real disaster, but after two years time has not done enough to heal rifts or rebuild homes and infrastructure. 

And on top of that, the universe has turned its eyes on earth. A two-bit, backwards, warring dive of a planet had defeated Thanos, and launched itself into intergalactic notoriety. 

“It’s not complicated. We can’t defend ourselves. That’s that.” Hope van Dyne neatly sets her coffee cup down on the kitchen counter of the makeshift Avengers headquarters, situated on a disused floor of a Pym Technologies facility in Midtown. She looks around the sparse crew around her. “Someone tell me I’m wrong?”

Scott scratches the back of his head. “You’re not. Quite clearly we’re not doing a grade A job right now, but we’re still figuring things out.”

“It has been two years. How long do we need to figure out that we are too weak?” Wanda is dancing her fingers over a sheaf of papers, rifling through reports of successful Kree raids hitting reservoirs upstate, an expanding Skrull settlement competing for resources in Finland, and a crime syndicate in Perth shipping a toxic hallucinogen derived from the blood of some of Thanos’s nastier foot soldiers. 

“We’re not weak,” Scott counters. “We’re just…”

“Incompetent?” 

Scott shrugs. “Out of our depth.”

Peter is sat amongst what’s left of the New York avengers, scrubbing blood from under his nails. Scott, Hope, Wanda. Colonel Rhodes is tied up in military operations. His hologram screen remains blank. Doctor Banner arrives in the call, green light flaring around his outline as he settles into his chair up in MIT. 

“What’s out of our depth?”

“Nothing - we’re just in a steep learning curve.”

“For god’s sake, Scott. People just lost their lives because we were outnumbered, outgunned, and outmanned.”

“The Kree raiders?” asks Banner, looking down at his tablet. “I’m just catching up now.” 

“If Thor hadn’t arrived when he did we would have lost even more.”

“So what, we stop trying? We’re doing our best, Hope.”

“I’m not saying we’re not. But we need help.” She turns to Thor. “Did Nova Corps give you a response yet? They’ve had our proposal for months.”

Thor’s expression grows tight. “I must deliver bad news. Nova Corps have assessed your idea of a Corps outpost stationed on earth, and did not find favourably. I think the words they used were, ‘not a tactical priority’.”

Hope curses. “So we’re just supposed to cope on our own?”

“Many places do.” Thor looks apologetic. 

Wanda clenches her hand and the papers twist up into a knot. “We are not important. Earth lost its best defenders and we are what’s left.” 

Banner looks up from his tablet, rubbing the scruff of his stubble. “I hate to say it, but without Nova Corps backing us up things don’t look so good.”

“Is that your way of saying you haven’t made any progress?” asks Hope. 

“Ah. Well. Yeah. Not for want of trying, but Tony and I barely got somewhere when we were working together. We never built anything that would have worked - Ultron was only up and walking around because the mind stone got involved. Now it’s just me… I’ll keep trying.” 

“Stark was right all along.” A red light consumes the papers until the start to char and shiver into ash over Wanda’s hand. “We ignored him and now it’s too late.”

“Like I said. I’ll keep trying - but a shield around the world… it’s a big ask.”

Peter looks up from his nails. The bowl of water is rust red, but his hands still aren’t clean. 

“So why don’t we ask him.”

“Ask who?”

“Mr Stark.”

Banner looks stricken. “Kid - I don’t -”

“We need Tony’s help. There’s only one way to ask him.”

Scott is looking between them all, brows knit together in confusion. “Am I missing something here? Tony Stark is dead, we can’t just phone him up.”

Peter looks at him sharply. “No. We have to go to the afterlife and find him.”


	2. Chapter 2

“We have to do what now?” says Scott.

“It’s been a long morning,” Banner cuts in. “Let’s all take a break and get back together after lunch and I’ll try and get Rhodes on the line -”

“No - I know you all think I’m just a stupid kid, but hear me out. We’ve been doing this for two years, right? And things have just been getting worse. We don’t have the resources or the leadership to make the Avengers what it was before, and the threats are way bigger than what you guys used to deal with. I’ve seen the numbers, there’s something nearly every day now. We can’t protect earth. We need something more. And Tony’s the only one who ever got close to doing it.”

“Kid, I hear you, I get you want to help but what you’re suggesting is not possible.”

Peter forces himself to meet Bruce’s eyes unfazed. “Thor said it is.”

The group turn to look at Thor, who’s shifting awkwardly on his seat. “Ah, well.”

“Isn’t that what you meant? When you said Yggdrasil connects us all? The worlds of the living and the dead?”

“That is what I said, yes. But I wasn’t suggesting a voyage there. It was meant as a comfort.”

Peter presses him. “But it is possible?”

Thor shifts again, eyes flashing between each member of the group. “Yes.”

Scott lets out a long, low whistle. “Holy fucking shit balls. Can I say that? It feels like a holy fucking shit balls kinda moment.”

Bruce takes his glasses off and rubs his temples. “Am I hearing this right. You’re telling me that the afterlife is a physical place, and it’s possible to go there?”

“For Asgardians? Yes. Valhalla, Niflheim and Hel are all realms as real as Asgard or Vanaheim. For mortals? I do not know.”

“But in theory?” asks Peter. “Someone could try?”

“Yes.”

“Hold up.” Hope holds both hands up. “Are we seriously talking about about life after death? And one of us _going_ there?”

“Yes,” says Peter at the same time as Bruce says, “no.”

“Even if it’s possible - and that’s a big if - it’s not like suggesting going down to the Genius Bar to get some advice. I mean the ethics of the idea alone -”

“I know -”

“It’s the _afterlife_.”

“I _know_. But what else are we going to do? Keep failing? Letting people die?” He looks down at his hands, picking at his cuticles. “Tony died to save us all. And we’re failing him.”

Bruce sags in his chair, an expression of pain flashing across his face. “Peter, are you sure you know what you’re suggesting?”

Peter looks back up. “I do.”

“You don’t have to be the one to do it.” His voice is soft, even through the hum of the long-distance projection.

Peter gives a crooked smile. “You think you can stop me trying?”

Bruce snorts. “No. I don’t.”

Hope looks around them, eyebrow arched in skepticism. “So it’s decided just like that?”

“Honey, you were the one saying we were running out of options.”

She rolls her eyes at Scott, but doesn’t protest further.

Peter turns to Thor. “What do we need to do?”

Hesitantly, Thor begins to explain.

Peter listens intently, a strange lightness buoying him up.

He realises after, as he’s making preparations for the trip, what the feeling is.

The first fragile threads of hope.

Peter hates it.

 

* * *

“So when do we start?”

Peter drops his travel back down on the glass and chrome coffee table of Pym Technologies’ lobby.

Hope looks up from her tablet. “Good morning to you, too, Peter.”

“Morning. So is Thor around? Did he figure out how we get to Yggdrasil?”

Hope hooks a hand around his elbow and steers him towards the private lift that goes directly to the Avengers’ floor. He scoops up his bag again and lets himself be hauled rapidly across the lobby, sending sharp-suited staff and a gaggle of visiting school kids scattering out of their way like fish fleeing a cruising shark.

“Do we need to have that chat about confidential information again?”

“No, Ms Van Dyne, I remember the talk. But is Thor here?”

She looks into the iris scanner, then pushes Peter in position to get scanned too. The doors hiss open and they step inside.

“Yes. He’s here.” Her voice is clipped.

The doors shut and then they’re speeding upwards so fast his stomach lurches.

The substitute, spin-off, all-we’ve-got Avengers occupy the whole floor somewhere near the top of Pym Technologies’ tallest tower in Manhattan. Not the penthouse, but something high enough up that no one can afford it. New York’s heated real estate market took a hit after half the world turned to ash. They might be back, but the economy is still crawling along a ditch so it’s not at the top of anyone’s list to rent expensive floor space. After the food shortages and medicine riots, people like to live further out. Where they can grow their own food and see other people coming.

It all means Avengers HQ has a great view.

Light glitters off the Hudson, the shimmering gold of the Chrysler building, the spike of what used to be Stark Tower.

The gang are all here. Scott and Wanda are sitting on the low couches adrift in the middle of the open floor. Doctor Banner is in hologram form, a shaft of refracted blue light that bends and twists as Peter walks past him. And Thor, pacing past the floor to ceiling glass windows. They can’t see the damaged Queensboro Bridge from here, or the 7 line, but Peter knows it’s still smoking.

Only Colonel Rhodes is missing. They haven’t even turned his holographic station on.

With everyone gathered and a fresh pot of coffee set before them, Thor begins to speak.

“With the death of Heimdall and the destruction of Asgard the way to travel between the realms was lost to me. My brother knew of secret routes, but he’s gone too…” Thor turns his back, arms folded, to look out the windows. South, towards Greenwich. “There was only one more person I could think of who might know something about it. Steven Strange. When Loki and I came to Midgard looking for our father, Strange was the one who knew we had come. Who understood about travel between worlds. I had a suspicion that when Loki brought our father to Midgard and hid him here, he chose the location he did for a reason. He must have smuggled Odin through one of the hidden paths. Strange confirmed it. There was a snag in the fabric between worlds that Loki exploited. Keeping our father near it so long only served to tear the hole wider.  It seems to still be there, for those who need it.”

“Strange spoke to you?” asks Hope. “Is there any chance he -”

“He will not ally himself with your operation. I am sorry.” Thor turns back to them and reaches for a cup. “His primary allegiance is to the - ”

“Time stone. Yeah. We’ve heard the speech.” Scott rolls his eyes. “Working with us against Thanos was a one off and don’t expect him to risk it again especially not with a two-bit half-baked setup like us… blah blah snarky blah. I saw him in an East Village deli once and he pretend like we’d never met. It really hurt my feelings.”

“You have a very forgettable face,” says Wanda, sipping her coffee.

“Okay, this is what I’m talking about. Unnecessary! Just because you  _can_ think of something funny to say doesn’t mean you should say it. And Thor if you see Mr Too Good For Us again, tell him it’s not like we haven’t made sacrifices to step up and do this job. I moved across the country to a city that smells like piss and hot garbage. The least he could do is come up ten blocks and say hi.”

“Scott, you moved here so you could bother Cassie at Colombia. Wanda, we talked about this, don’t roast Scott, it’s too easy.” She turns to Thor. “Okay, so what you’re telling me is that you’ve figured it out? How we get to the afterlife?”

Thor nods. “There is a vacant lot downtown. It was once the retirement home where my father spent his final years. Now it is rubble.”

Peter stands and picks up his bag again. “Then what are we waiting for? We know where it is, so let’s go.”

“Hold up.” Hope grabs his arm again and sits him back down. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I told you, you’d have to try and stop me.”

“Peter, think about it. Out of those of us here, who’s survived going to another plane of existence? Thor has travelled between worlds, and Scott and I have both survived the quantum realm. It should be one of us.”

“I’m afraid it might not be as simple as that,” says Thor. “I have never ventured to those branches of the tree of life but what I know of it is this: to successfully reach your destination, you do not follow a physical map or markers. You follow the memory of the person you seek. The emotional connection that still ties you together.”

Scott leans forward. “Okay I guess that limits us a bit, but most of us spent at least a bit of time with him - and uh frankly kinda traumatic, memorable time. Plus he was pretty damn famous.”

“All I know is that the weaker the connection, the higher the risk one gets lost. And does not return.”

The blue light of the hologram flares as Bruce shifts in his seat, and speaks for the first time. “I’ll go. Tony and I …. We’ve been through a lot. I’ll go. Just give me time to wrap up a few things here and I’ll travel down - “

Peter cuts him off. “It’s gotta be me -”

“Peter…”

“No, hear me out. Doctor Banner, no offense but I spent a lot more time with Mr Stark before he… before it happened. You missed several years.”

Bruce can’t hide the guilt that flashes across his face. “Peter, we’re not going to let a kid take such a big risk.”

“But that’s exactly why you should. What’s my codename? A4. Because you’re all more important than me. I’m not being salty about it, I just mean that of all the people the world can risk losing, it’s me. If one of you guys go and there’s another raid, another disaster, earth will need you more than me.”

Hope’s hand comes to rest gently on his arm this time. “That’s… that’s not how it works. All our lives are equal value.”

“They do. I know that.” He knows how earnest he sounds. “But you gotta know I’m right Ms Van Dyne. You’re the leader, now. You know sometimes the right decision is the one you hate to make.”

Hope can’t meet his eyes. She looks away as Scott cuts in.

“Ok kid, nice speech but we’re not about to chuck a minor at our problems and sit back and take the easy ride. We’ll figure something out.”

“I am technically, officially an adult you know. I mean legally I’m twenty-three.”

“Yeah yeah but we’re all deleting five years off that. And also deleting this idea. Hope, help me shut this down. Hope?”

But she’s staring hard at the floor, worrying at a hangnail. Then looks up.

There’s a heartbeat, a silent, endless moment that stretches between them. Peter holds his breath.

Then she speaks.

“Okay. Peter. It’s agreed. Consider this your first official mission as an avenger.”

 

* * *

Peter wakes in the quiet hours before dawn, cold and sweating at once, his heart racing so fast it terrifies him. If Tony were still around he’d ask him to check if he was okay. If his heart could ever go out on him from beating too hard.

If the nightmares ever fade.

In his dreams Peter is alone on a vast and alien battlefield, running faster and fasting, jumping further, trying desperately to stay ahead. He is on Titan and he’s out of his depth. He’s back on earth - or so he’s told - darting past churned up earth and mutilated bodies, gauntlet clutched to his chest. Curled on the ground as hell fire rains down around him. The world is ending and he cannot do anything to stop it, even in his dreams.

He’s always too slow. Too late.

He always watches Tony Stark die.

He tries not to sleep, if he can help it. Blames it on school work or patrols or something else that means he has to take another late night, spend another morning of class yawning, another day half-dazed. No one knows him at MIT. There’s a lot he can get away with.

Peter doesn’t tell May what he’s planning.

It’s not that he thinks she’ll try to stop him. It’s been a long time since she’s had any chance of doing that.

It’s that he knows what he’ll see on her face.

Pity.

Over their years together she’s spent enough time nursing him through grief. He knows what she thinks when she looks at him. It’s what Ned thinks, and what Hope and Scott and Bruce and anyone left thinks.

Poor kid. Lost so much.

And Peter knows what he’ll do in return. Smile. Say it’s okay, he’s okay. Don’t worry about him. He’s got this.

Because pity isn’t worth a thing.

Action is the only thing that counts.

He sits in his room, the grey, washed out light of dawn reaching through his window as he looks at his phone. Thumb hovering over his contacts.

For a moment, Peter feels guilt. If they’re going to do this, then maybe there are people he _should_ tell.

Pepper Potts. Happy Hogan. James Rhodes. They should know. If anything, they lost more than he did.

No. He shakes himself. It would be cruel to tell them. Hope is far more cruel a burden than despair.

He has to take this bullet alone.

 

* * *

Greenwich is quiet.

At the far end of the street an electric city bus hums as it pulls off from its stop. Birdsong chirps and trills in the trees. On a building opposite, there’s a several-storey high Iron Man mural spreading out across the bricks. What was once a makeshift memorial of candles and flowers and plastic Iron Man helmets has become something more permanent over the last two years. Money was raised for a bench, a plaque, a list of lives lost, with Tony’s largest across the top.

Peter has been here before, of course. He knows each shrine and painting, every plaque and poster like the map of scars across his skin.

Thor has brought them further down the block to stop in front of the weed-strewn patch of land that used to be Shady Acres retirement home. There is red-brick rubble, twists of garbage and a few rusted pieces of construction equipment.

It doesn’t look much.

“How… do we know it’s there?”

Peter has stopped by a bodega to shove his travel bag full of jerky and power bars and any other snacks he thought might get him through the afterlife. He is suddenly and painfully aware that he is out of his depth.

Thor looks over the lot, his expression tight. “I… am not sure. If my brother were here… but he is not. So we will have to work it out for ourselves.”

Peter started to step into the lot but Thor clapped a hand on his shoulder and held him in place. “No one will think less of you if you don’t go.”

Peter felt his cheeks heat up as Thor gave him that look. The pity look. Was he such an open book?

“Maybe not. But I gotta try, Mr Odinson. You’ve seen how things are. We don’t stand a chance without Tony - I mean without Mr Stark’s tech.”

“I know you feel you must help. I understand all too well what it is to lose something so great you don’t know how you can live past it. But I urge you to think whether this will hurt _you_ more than help others.”

Peter pulls out of his grip. “That’s not important. People might die if I don’t. More people than already have. Please, you gotta let me do something right. Do something that matters.”

“I’m not talking about the risk of the journey. I’m talking about what you might find.”

“I know what I signed up for.” He tightens his grip on his bag strap.

“Do you?”

Peter lets the moment stretch out between them. The breeze is warm on his cheeks, the first promise of summer. It’s almost peaceful.

“I know I can’t bring him back.”

“The dead have their own realm for a reason.”

“I said I _know_! If you want to stop me, stop me. Knock me out or something. But tell me this: do you really think anyone has a better chance of finding him than me? Finding him - and making it back? Tell me I’m not the one who has to do this. Tell me I’m not our best shot.”

“Rhodey or Bruce -”

“Aren’t here. I am.”

Thor hesitates, then rests his hand on Peter’s shoulder again, this time gently. “It’s far more brave to be scared of something and do it anyway, than to pretend you feel nothing.”

“I’m not - I didn’t -” Peter swallows. “I _am_ scared. But I can’t stop thinking, if Tony was here, he wouldn’t hesitate.”

“You are not him. Which is a good thing, I am not sure the world could manage with two Tony Starks.”

Peter snorts. “It’s not doing so great with none.”

“None of us are our fathers, Peter. We are our own men. And that means making our own choices. So I will not try to stop you, if this is what you choose.”

“It is. I want to help - I want to at least try.”

Thor nods, and together they step from the sidewalk into the lot.

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything that is not as it should be.”

“Okay. Super helpful.”

They work through the lot, digging through rubble, overturning garbage until Peter moves a rotting plank of wood to find a humming, glowing ripple in the air.

“Huh.”

Thor looks over his shoulder. “I would think that’s it, yes.”

Peter reaches out a hand towards the light and felt something like static jolt up his arm.

“I thought this was gonna take longer.”

“I cannot deny that my respect for Loki’s skills has taken something of a blow.”

“So I just… touch it, or?”

“I suppose that would be the thing to try.”

Peter tightens the straps on his bag. “Ok. So. I guess this is it.” He looks at the iridescent ripple, the sparks and tendrils coiling out from it. “Um. Bye?”

“Fare well, Peter Parker. And return safely.”

“I’ll try.” He steps forward - then pauses. “And thanks. For - you know.”

Thor smiles. “I know.”

There is nothing left to do.

But jump.

And when was he ever one to keep both feet on the ground?

Peter presses his hand into the tangled snag of static and light.

For a moment he feels resistance - and then he is falling - no being pulled - the tear opening like a mouth and swallowing him whole.

He sees a last flash of tumbling sky and asphalt.

And then for the second time in his life, Earth is gone.

 

* * *

Yggdrasil is light unending.

It is warmth and darkness and pain and joy and spring and winter and dawn and death in one pure splintering shuddering river coursing unending. It is inside him and outside him at once, hooked into his chest, tugging his heart apart to break and reform him every second every moment. There is nothing to hold on to, he has no hands to grasp with, no breath to yell, no future no past no self no other. He is breaking apart. It is a relief.

He can’t be a failure if he’s nothing. He can’t disappoint anyone.

Someone.

Someone he doesn’t want to disappoint.

_If you die, that’s on me_.

A shape forms in the light. Something like an image. A memory.

Something tangible to hold on to.

Peter reaches out towards the memory. He has a name - Peter - and the memory is dear to him.

A face. A voice. Strong arms embracing him, the quirk of an eyebrow, the ripple and dart of conversation.

He remembers what he’s here to do.

Piece by piece, Peter drags each fragment of himself back together, gathers himself around that memory. Around the pain and the love in equal measure.

Around Tony Stark.

A golden branch appears before him, and Peter takes a step forward. And another.

With each step he feels himself realer, feels the weight of his limbs and the roll of his gait.

And with each step he thinks of Tony. Only him. His one goal.

The branch splits and forks, growing thinner beneath him. He passes the sound of singing, the rush of the sea, birdsong, laugher. The hook is in him now, tugging forward, leading him along each path.

Until all at once he is no longer walking the branches of Yggdrasil. Beneath his feet is grass and soil. The bright white light softens like dusk falling and the world resolves itself into being.

He is stood by a lake, surrounded by trees. He can hear wind in the leaves and the lap of water along the shore.

Before him, is a house.

He knows this house.

Silently, Peter walks forward. He is holding his breath - when did he last breathe? - sliding through the world dreamlike. The air shimmers with his anxiety, flickering in and out of existence at the corners of his eyes. The dream will only hold as long as he holds on to it. He lets his excitement, his fear, pour into it as he reaches the doors.

That hook tugging him forward, forward.

Towards the ting and clang of metal on metal.

He rounds the house and goes towards the open garage doors.

The hope is so painful he can’t bear it.

Tony stands, welding mask in one hand, jet of flame into the other as he works.

Unscarred. Unbruised. Frowning in concentration as he works leading along a join.

Peter stops. Heart, breath, thoughts: everything stops.

Because Tony has stopped working. He lowers the flame and drops the mask to his side.

And looks wide-eyed at Peter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here I was trying to get over Endgame and they drop THAT far from home trailer. I might not make it out of 2019 guys Marvel are killing me out in the open.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Peter stands frozen in the doorway. It is Tony and he is really here. The edges of his vision are fading white, the world dreamlike all centred on Tony before him. 

Tony makes a hesitant move forward, confused. He is drifting, a little unstable as the helmet and welding iron in his hands flicker in and out. Like this is a memory Peter has stumbled into and Tony is locked inside it. 

But he pulls himself together, and speaks again. 

“No, you can’t be here. I saved you.” And with that he’s stumbling forward, reaching for Peter. “Oh god, no, please, tell me I saved you. Tell me you aren’t really here.”

Tony’s hands are on his shoulders, gripping too tight and Peter understands what he’s asking.

“No, no, it’s okay Mr Stark. You saved me. I’m alive.”

“Oh thank god.” Tony pulls him into a hug, holding tight. “Jesus, kid, what are you trying to do, give me another heart attack?”

“I’m sorry, Mr Stark.” Peter is speaking muffled into Tony’s shoulder. He can feel the heat coming off him, the scratch of his beard against his skin, the smell of metal and oil from his work. 

He didn’t think this was going to be so  _ real _ .

There is something wrong with his chest. He can’t draw a proper breath. It keeps hitching and choking. He is going to cry - he is already crying, the edges of his vision blurring. 

He wraps his arms tighter around Tony, letting his tears soak into the shoulder of Tony’s shirt. “I missed you so much.”

He thinks he can hear the hitch in Tony’s voice when he says, “I missed you, too, Pete.”

And then, somewhere between breaths, he is bawling. 

He has cried many times over since Tony died in front of him, but it is like something new has been torn open inside him. It is as raw as it was in the days after the funeral, when nothing could console him. He thought he had numbed up since then. That grief had retreated behind the hazy screen of time. 

But Peter knows time isn’t shit. 

Now, right now, the hurt is fresh, and obliterating. 

Tony curls a hand around the back of his neck, stroking his hair and making shushing noises as he sobs messily, noisily into his shoulder. Lets it run its course. Holds Peter for as long as he needs it. 

When he is done, when he can take a normal breath again, he is in a hazy almost drugged state. He unpeels himself.

Tony draws back and it takes everything for Peter not to cling to him. “So, are you going to tell me?”

“What?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Right - yeah - I came here to ask you something. I need you -  _ we  _ need your help.”

Tony gives him a long look, expression shifting from relief to something unreadable. 

“Well. You better come in.”

 

* * *

 

Peter never knew the Lake House with Tony in it. 

Sure he’s been over enough times that the layout of the kitchen and lounge, the stairs descending into the middle of the open plan room, are all familiar. But there are touches that are wrong. A table with an embedded touch screen and holoprojector takes up space where Morgan keeps her chaotic mess of toys and tools and books and blankets and everything else she drags in to use in her projects. There’s a bookcase missing, and the sofa doesn’t have half as many throws as Pepper scatters around now. 

This is Tony’s home as he lived in it. 

This is a home Peter has never known. 

Tony brings him inside and the house  resolves itself into solidity. Outside Peter can see the forest begin to blur and fade into dabs or brown and green. Like this world is only here for Tony, when he moves, it moves with him. Or maybe Tony is the one sustaining it. This is the memory he chooses to live inside.

There’s paints and paper spread across the dining table; Tony starts clearing up, picking up a brush dripping blue-tinted water onto the wood grain and mopping up a spill. 

“Morgan’s down for a nap so if you’re gonna cry more try to keep it down.”

Peter sniffles. “I’m not gonna cry.”

“Sometimes a man’s gotta cry, I get it, but maybe take it out to the woods.”

He takes one of the paintings and pins it to the fridge to dry. Peter can see it now. It’s clearly something Morgan was working on: a large red blob with vestigial limbs shooting through a milky blue sky.

Tony stands back to consider Morgan’s portrait. “I like it. Abstract. I think I’m gonna make it my new official photo.” He gathers the rest of the paints. “Maybe she can do one for you when she’s up, I think she could do something really horrifying with the spider concept...” 

He trails off, brush swirling through water as he cleans it. 

“... She’s not here, is she. She’s not upstairs napping.” 

Peter shifts his weight. “No. I don’t think so.” 

“This is just a memory. I’m alone here.” Blue and red paint cloud together turning purple. Tony dumps the water out into the sink. “Good. She shouldn’t be here. Like you shouldn’t be here.”

“When did telling me not to go somewhere ever work?”

He looks up at Peter, mouth drawn into a tight smile. “I know, but I figured being a father means you’ve got to at least try.”

Peter hovers inside the doorway, watching Tony as he goes to the kitchen and takes a carton of OJ out of the fridge then pours two glasses. He hands one to Peter. 

“Drink it. Sugar is good for shock.”

“I’m not in shock.”

“You can’t lie to the dead, Peter.”

“I’m not! Wait, really?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been dead before. Drink the juice.”

Peter drinks the juice and wonders how its possible for him to drink juice in the afterlife. He realises he has no idea if this is his real body or not and whether it will get tired or hungry and if it does whether afterlife food will sate him.

Like any of his badly thought through ideas, he decides to just roll with it until it starts to go down in flames. If Tony is offering him ghost juice, drink the ghost juice. 

Oh god Tony is  _ really here _ . 

“Kid?” Tony is frowning. 

Peter lets out a hysterical giggle. “No - I’m - I just realised I didn’t actually think this was going to work but holy shit, Tony, I  _ found you _ .” 

Tony looks at him for another beat, thinking. Then puts the juice away and points Peter towards the couch. 

“About that. Sit. Explain.”

They sit, and Peter does his best to explain. About the the sudden attention the earth is getting, and the mess they’re making of defending it without him. 

“So we realised we had to do what you always planned to. A suit of armour around the world. We’ve been trying to make it work but, well… we’re not you.”

Tony has gone quiet. He’s sitting back against the arm of the sofa, hand over his mouth. 

“So will you help us, Mr Stark?”

He doesn’t respond for a minute. He’s looking away into the empty fireplace. Peter can’t read him. 

He wonders what else he and Tony have lost in the last two years. What else he’s forgotten.

The flecks of grey in his beard. The arch of his eyebrow. The busy movement of his hands.

“Mr Stark?”

Tony turns round, focus snapping back to him.

“Last time someone came to disrupt my peaceful retirement it didn’t end so well for me.”

Peter feels like he’s been punched for a moment.

Because of course. Why didn’t he think about how this would feel for Tony. He only knows what happened in the run up to the time heist from what Scott let slip occasionally, but he knows he’s not the first visitor at this house asking for help. Asking Tony to put his peace on the line. 

He feels like a monster.

Tony rubs his beard. “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting is the great option you think it is. Last time I tried this things got kinda apocalyptic.” 

“I’m not suggesting we build, like, the Death Star or SkyNet or something. Just  _ something  _ to help us out.”

“I don’t want to unleash something on the world when I won’t be there to clean up my mess.”

Peter is an inconsiderate, selfish, dumbass monster. He’s come to bother Tony with memories of the worst things that happened to him. 

“I know… I’m sorry, Tony, but we’ve run out of options.”

“Let me think about it.” Then he abruptly changes the conversation, throwing himself up from the couch. “When did you last eat? Why do you look ill. What are they feeding you in college?”

“I eat plenty.”

“An outrageous lie.” Tony is in the kitchen again pulling down pots and pans, looking them over then discarding them and opening a drawer to pull our spatulas and knives and graters. “Grilled cheese or buttered noodles?”

Peter watches him do that oh so familiar dance between counter and cupboard, movement chaotic and purposeful at once. Tony opens the fridge again and pulls out an empty bag of grated cheese.

“Grilled cheese is off the menu. I forgot Morgan ate the last of the cheese at lunch.” He stills, staring at the packet. “I forgot Morgan…” Something tight and pained crosses his face. Then he twitches the packet back into the fridge and spins on his heel to face Peter. “Buttered noodles it is.”

Peter is twisted to sit leaning over the back of the couch. He quirks an eyebrow. “Are you really gonna tell me I don’t eat right and then offer  _ buttered noodles  _ to fix it?”

Tony stops dead in the middle of the kitchen, spatula held to his chest in mock horror.

“Oh! I’m sorry. Did you want to cook? Or did you want to sit crying on my sofa? Make up your mind, you’re interrupting my eternal rest.”

And because Tony is right there in front of him and because Peter has just sobbed himself to the point of exhaustion and because for the first time in two years his chest doesn’t feel heavy and broken, Peter smiles. 

“Sorry, Mr Stark, I’m sure they’re tasty buttered noodles.”

“Damn right. The best.”

Tony twitches round the kitchen cooking in the most abstract sense of the word. While he does Peter sits on a stretch of counter and tells him everything about school and the move to MIT and upgrades to his web fluid and that whole mess in London with Mysterio. 

“Do you drink?”

“What?”

“At college. It’s okay, you can say yes, I don’t have cell coverage here to rat you out to Aunt May.”

“Uh, Mr Stark I’m still under age.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“No. I don’t. Honestly,” he adds when Tony arches a brow at him. 

“Good. Pain is never a good reason to start.” Tony thwacks him on the arm with the spatula. “Off the counter. Sit your ass at the table. This is a civilised household.”

They sit either side of the table as Peter eats his noodles and they’re hot and delicious and quite real. Tony listens to him ramble and talk with his mouth full and spill out all the things he’s wanted to say for the last two years. 

“It sounds like you’re doing good, Pete.” Tony’s smile is warm, eyes crinkling. 

Peter’s hand falters, fork halfway to his mouth. 

“I - I’m trying.” He looks down. “I haven’t always… it’s been hard, too.”

Tony’s smile falters only a little. “I know. Loss always is.”

 

 

* * *

 

Later, Peter is in the kitchen washing dishes when he sees it.

The photo, framed, of him and Tony when he graduated his Stark Internship, both making bunny ears behind each others’ heads.

He knows this photo.

He stacks away the dishes, and wipes down the counter top, finishing up by the shelf the photo is on. Night has sunk quickly around the house. He wonders if this is part of Tony’s memory. Does time move like it does back in the world of the living? Or does the sun rise and fall with Tony’s wants. Tony is somewhere else in the house getting bedding for the couch.

After the funeral, Pepper gave Peter the photo. He still has it in the same frame. It sits on a shelf in his room alongside a picture of his uncle Ben, and the biological father who at this point he can only remember in hazy snatches. 

He is outnumbered by the dead. 

“Spiderino? Pete?” Tony waves a hand in front of his face. 

Peter’s attention snaps back to the room. 

“There’s a sleeping bag or a comforter, take your pick.”

A heap of blankets and pillows now covers the couch.

“Oh. Great. Thank you.” 

Peter starts building a bed nest as Tony locks up. Faint woodland sounds come from beyond the pitch black windows, leaves rustling in the dream wind, the bark of a fox. Maybe, above the treetops, is the outline of a moon.

Tony stops at the bottom of the stars, hand on the newel post. “Get some sleep. You look beat. I’ll… think about what you asked.”

Peter pauses a pillow in each hand. “Thank you. For… everything.”

Tony’s mouth curls up. “It was just some noodles kid.”

“That’s not that I meant.”

“I know.”

Before Peter can reply, Tony is disappearing up stairs and Peter is left on his own.

He hates it.

Lying in the darkness, feet pressing against the arm of the couch, it doesn’t get better. 

His eyes have adjusted, picking up faint light from wherever he can, so the room is sketched in outlines. The fireplace, the table, the black voids of the windows like space, like death. 

He wonders if Tony is asleep upstairs. He never seemed to sleep much when he was alive, maybe it’s no different now. Peter doesn’t like to sleep much anymore either. Not with the nightmares that follow him from night to night. 

Though, maybe, tonight will be different. He has Tony again, for whatever little while. Then again, maybe that won’t make a difference at all. 

He thought he’d known how much he couldn’t bear being on his own since he lost Tony. He was wrong. It is so much worse now he’s found him again. 

He is going to have to leave again. Lose Tony again.

He didn’t think this through but he absolutely would not take back his choice to come. 

And then the thought comes to him, as he shifts, rolling over a lumpy cushion. 

If Tony is here, then maybe his uncle Ben is out there somewhere. 

Maybe his parents are, too. 

This thought is too huge he is floored for a moment. 

Because he feels it now, he knows it. There is so much more for him here than there is back in the land of the living. 

Maybe he should have died, too. 

He might have been happier.

 

* * *

 

The paints are back on the table. 

At some point during the night, while Peter slept fitfully, the house has reset itself in places. The art supplies are spread out across the table, Morgan’s portrait of Tony laid out still a little wet. In the fridge, the juice has refilled itself. The dishes have gone from the draining board and are back in the cupboard.

Peter stretches and pads barefoot across the boards to look out of the window. The forest seems more solid than yesterday. Reality is seeping in the longer he stays.

The cold thought hits him that maybe Tony has reset, too. Forgotten him. 

He is about to go out to the garage to check when footsteps on the stairs stop him. 

“Morning. Did you sleep?” Tony joins him in the kitchen, yawning. “I’ve got eggs in here somewhere. You want eggs?” 

Peter breathes out, tension leaving him.  “Sure. Yes please.” 

This time he helps Tony, fetching butter and plates and setting coffee brewing. 

They eat standing in the kitchen, bird song rising outside.

“I’ve thought about it.”

Peter looks up, half a slice of toast and eggs shoved in his mouth. He chews quickly and swallows. Tony has put down his food half eaten.

“And?”

Tony holds his gaze. “I can’t do it. No, I mean I  _ won’t  _ do it.”

“I - what? What do you mean you won’t do it?”

“Exactly what I said. I thought about it and no. I’m not going to open that box again.”

“But you were  _ right _ . That was what we needed. They didn’t listen to you then but we’re listening to you now. And we need your help.”

“See, I don’t think you do. You said you’ve run out of options but I disagree. I didn’t come take an interest in you just cause it served my cause to have an extra ally when Captain Righteous Drama was throwing a tantrum. I took an interest because you were a damn child genius getting overlooked.”

“But I’m  _ not _ . I can’t figure this out, I’ve tried, we all have. I’ve tried so goddamn hard to do everything you would but I’m  _ failing _ .” 

“So stop trying to do what I would have done and do what you would do.”

Peter drops his plate down on the counter and pushes it away in frustration. He can feel tears pricking his eyes again and he wants to smash something. Because it would be better to stay angry than let this other feel in. This tidal wave of grief that threatens to drown him. 

“What good are you if you won’t help. I thought you wanted to help people, but you’re just selfish.”

He hates the words as he says them. Tony looks down for a moment. 

“Think what you gotta think, Pete. But you don’t need me for this. You don’t need me.”

“That’s not true. I need you, Tony.” His voice breaks, and it’s like something cracks open inside of him and panic, pure panic is spilling out. 

Because if Tony won’t help him then he has no reason to stay, and he’ll have to go home and that’ll mean leaving and saying goodbye. Tony is going to leave him again and he can’t - he can’t he can’t he can’t, oh god please not again. This is it. This is all life is. It’s just loss and loss and loss until you have nothing left to give. He’s not sure he wants to live if that’s it.

He buckles, folding towards the floor as his breathing shudders and stops, his pulse racing too fast, throat closing, panic eating him up. It is all too much it’s swallowing him whole. He can’t breathe, he can’t think, he’s going die. He’s going to fuck this all up.

He is down on the cold tiles, and somewhere along the line Tony has come to the floor with him, an arm around him holding him up, pulling at his shoulder to make him open up and breath. 

“Hey, hey. Shh. Listen to me. Peter? Look at me.”

He drags his attention to Tony’s face and oh god it makes it so much worse because Tony  _ left  _ him and now he’s going to have to lose him all over again.

“Stop that. Whatever you’re thinking, stop. Just look at me. Okay? Can you do that?”

Peter forces himself to give a little nod. 

“This is a panic attack. It shitty but it’s normal. You’re going to be okay.” 

He pushes the hair back from Peter’s face, helping him get a little hair. His other hand is stroking Peter’s back in long, slow movements. 

“Can you breathe with me? In for five, out for seven. Okay? Just keep looking at me.”

Peter’s lungs don’t want to cooperate. How long will it take him to suffocate? He’s going to fail Tony one more time. 

“In and out, come on Pete, you got this.”

He tries again and manages to suck a breath in for three before losing it, but then he gets it again. Tony is breathing with him, the rise and fall of his chest a map to follow, the hand on his back warm and solid. 

“There you go. You’re going to be okay.”

Peter can breathe again but now he’s crying because Tony is so, so wrong. 

“I’m not.” His voice is raspy with tears. “I’m not going to be okay. I can’t do this, Tony, not on my own. I don’t know how.”

Tony is stroking his hair again, god damn him smiling like he knows better. 

“Sure you do.”

“I  _ don’t _ .” 

He is sobbing like a little kid and it would be embarrassing if he wasn’t so far gone. Tony shifts to wrap him in a hug and Peter twists his hands in Tony’s shirt. 

“Please, please don’t make me go. Please don’t make me lose you again, I can’t - I can’t handle that, I can’t -”

“It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“I’m not - I can’t - please don’t make me leave. There’s nothing for me there. All that happens to me is that I lose and I lose and I lose.  _ Please _ .”

“Pete.” Tony’s voice is soft and comforting and Peter hates it. “I don’t think that’s not how this works. You belong there. Not here.”

Peter pulls out of his arms, sniffing back the snot and tears. 

“I’m not going back. You can’t make me.” 

“Pete…”

Peter looks up at Tony, eyes red and raw, but determined. “I’m staying here. With you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Peter wakes up and stares at the ceiling. It’s been three days since he told Tony he wasn’t leaving and he’s still here, in this strange dream-copy of the farmhouse.  

Victory. 

If victory is a lumpy sofa, waking at dawn and thinking about death all day. 

Well, Peter supposes he  _ is  _ the one who wanted this.

He wishes he could do something with it other than lie so still he could be a corpse. He feels like a corpse. Cold and clammy and stiff.  

It wasn’t that he planned not to get out of bed - out of his sofa and blanket nest - but when he woke up the morning after telling Tony he wasn’t leaving and the blazing argument that followed, he just… didn’t see the point. 

He could get up but would it really be any different from staying in bed? He could wash his face and put his shoes on and look at the washed-out trees that circled them but it wouldn’t fundamentally be an iota different to lying there. 

Quiet. Still. Like death. 

So it’s easier just to roll over, bury his face in the comforter and  _ stop. Thinking _ . 

Thinking only gets him in trouble. Thinking has large awful thoughts like  _ Tony is dead forever  _ and  _ everyone I love leaves me _ . No thank you. He’s done with thoughts. 

Tony sits with him a while. Brings breakfast, or at least Peter thinks he does because he can hear the clatter of a plate and cup and cutlery on a tray, smell the bright sharp scent of oranges and the bitter warmth of coffee and the rich saltiness of butter. Even shoved into a comforter that’s dank with BO, his spidey senses can tell him promptly that there is food. 

He thinks about rolling over and sitting up. About nibbling on some toast, working his way up to looking Tony in the eye and saying sorry for being a huge asshole. But then time rolls away from him as he tries to find the right words, tries to muster his muscles to movement - and how long has it  _ been  _ because Tony is getting up, taking the tray away. 

He missed his chance. Tony is gone. 

Tony is here but really, Tony is  _ gone. _

He thinks he sleeps. He’s not sure. Everything is the same with his eyes shut and the blanket over his head. Maybe it’s darker when he comes too again, the sun shuffled over to the other side of the room. 

Tony comes with food again, and again he can’t move. It’s like right at the moment of the thing he wants most - care, companionship,  _ Tony  _ \- his body freezes up. Betrays him. Denys him. 

One time Tony sits with him, hand on his arm, rubbing his thumb against his skin. Says, “Okay, kiddo, I get it. I’ve been there. ”

He is not expecting this softness, but maybe that was what five years of Morgan taught Tony. 

And that softness was worst of all. Like knives inside him. Because he still can’t make himself move. Still lets Tony go.

He thinks, idly, that he must be very angry with Tony for dying. 

Oh no, thinking. Stop that. 

Night again, and day, and night, and then day again which is awful and his head hurts and his muscles cramp. He has shuffled far enough to pee, to drink some water (only ever when Tony isn’t around), and then back to his nest. 

Nest isn’t the right word. Nest implies nurture. Implies care.  _ Home _ . 

This is something quite far removed from that. Stewing in his own filth. 

He thinks, idly, that he must hate himself. 

 

* * *

 

It is morning again, another blank, milk-grey morning. He hears Tony in the kitchen. Waits for the tray to thunk down next to him.

But there is no tray. Only Tony grabbing hold of one end of his blanket and  _ yanking _ , sending him rolling onto the floor like a collapsing burrito.

“Ow. Fuck.”

He narrowly avoids clonking his head on the coffee table, and lies, sprawled on the floor blinking up into the light. Tony stands over him holding the blanket at arms length and wrinkling his nose. 

“Oh good, you’re up.”

“Uh, actually kinda the opposite.”

Tony is ignoring him, bundling up the blanket and punting it towards the laundry room. 

“And it’s a good thing you’re up cause otherwise I was gonna have to start charging rent. And as you have no way of earning money you were gonna get into debt real fast, which is pretty irresponsible financial behaviour.” 

Peter stares at him. Three days of being a hermit trapped inside his emotions has left him singularly unable to keep up with Tony’s conversation. 

So he lies on the floor and stares at the ceiling, which is wide, and blank, and unblemished.

Tony steps over his legs, and goes to the kitchen. Then he comes back with a spray bottle of water for misting the house plants and sprays it in Peter’s face.

“Up! Up! Now now now now up up up!”

He keeps squirting the water in Peter’s face and he squirms away, finally sitting up to wipe his eyes with the bottom of his t-shirt. 

“Okay, okay. I’m up."

“Oh, Mr Parker I didn’t see you there. I thought we had a teenager-shaped mould infestation.” 

Peter hauls himself to his feet, cracking his joints and stretching. “You got me awake, Mr Stark, you don’t have to keep cracking jokes about it.”

Tony puts a hand to his chest in shock. “Jokes? What jokes? The smell was getting toxic, I was going to wash the whole house out with bleach.”

“You won, I'm up.”

“Excellent. Keep going up. Don’t come back down until you’ve taken at least two layers of skin off in the shower.” 

Peter rolls his eyes but he does what he’s told, lets himself be shoo-ed upstairs to the bathroom with a fresh towel. 

He comes back downstairs fifteen minutes later with curls of wet hair sticking to his cheeks and forehead, wearing a spare t-shirt of Tony’s with the logo of some ancient band on the front. Tony is in the kitchen leaning against the counter, swiping through something on his tablet. Breakfast things have been taken out of the fridge and the cupboards, but nothing has been prepared. 

“Hungry?”

“Kinda.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Peter looks at the bread and jelly and cereal and milk and juice and back to Tony. 

Tony is studiously ignoring him. 

Right. 

Peter makes toast and stands in the kitchen eating it without a plate showering crumbs on the floor. 

Two can play at this game. 

Tony hands him a dustpan and brush when he’s finished. 

 

* * *

 

After, Tony takes him outside and points him at a heap of logs and an axe.  

“You want me to … chop wood?”

“They’re called chores. Kids do them in exchange for being allowed to sponge off adults for years.” 

“Do you even get winter here? Can’t you build a log chopper?”

“Oh come on, this is like, zero effort for you. Help an old man out.”

Peter eyes his muscular arms. “Uh, you’re not exactly ancient, Mr Stark.”

“No, I’m just dead. So chop.” 

Peter flinches. 

“Oh, does it bother you when I say I’m dead?”

“I mean. Yeah. Kinda.”

“Why? It’s the truth.” 

“You don’t have to remind me.” Peter busies himself picking up the axe and setting up the first log. 

“I don’t know, Pete, seems like I do. Cause I’m really, definitely dead. I don’t even have a pulse!” He holds two fingers to his neck to check. “Huh. Yep. No pulse.” 

“Can you _stop_?”

“Not so far, no.”

Peter mutters a curse under his breath.  

“Less whining, more chopping. You’re the one who wanted to stay, so do something.”

Peter chops the logs while Tony sits on the porch drinking green tea, watching him over his tablet. Then sets him to mowing the lawn with an ancient push mower. It’s a rust-bucket and jams up every other pass, so he ends up sat on the ground taking it to pieces to sharpen the blades and oil the moving parts. The sun rises higher, burning his ears and the back of his neck, and he realises he’s sweat through the borrowed t-shirt when Tony appears with lemonade and a plate of sandwiches. And instructions to go weed the vegetable patch. 

Tony spends the whole time watching him from the comfy looking chair on the porch, which Peter thinks is an egregious crime. Maybe he should accuse Tony of exploiting child labour, if Tony will insist on treating him like he's still a kid. But then as he finishes up with the weeding, Tony joins him in the vegetable plot and talks him through the beans and carrots and cabbage and zucchini and onions and leeks and radishes and tomatoes arranged in ranks, tied to sticks and under nets. Peter always excelled at biology but growing plants is the one thing he’s never tried. Though he knows the principles, it’s something else to have Tony point out aphids and rot, pass him sprays and pruning shears so together the tend the plot for another hour or two. Then they pick a head of lettuce and a cucumber for dinner. Tony sets him chopping up a salad while he boils pasta and empties a jar of sauce over it. 

They eat at the table, arguing about ergonomic gardening tool design. 

Peter realises he’s smiling. 

Unbidden, at Tony’s terrible attempt to explain robotic fine motor skills with a salt shaker and half a drawer of cutlery. 

For a moment, forgetting about everything, he feels happy.  

He’s glad he stayed. 

“Okay, bed time,” Tony says, flicking the dish towel over his shoulder after they finish washing up.

Peter stacks the last dash in the sink. “... Mr Stark I’m eighteen. You don’t have to tell me when to go to bed. I can look after myself.”

“Can you? Not sure I’ve seen the evidence to back that up.”

“I’m trying!”

“Oh is that what moving onto my couch and living in your own filth for three days was?”

Peter goes red. It wasn’t his finest hour. 

“Okay, fine. I’ll go to bed.”

“Good boy.” 

Tony pats his head and Peter hates how happy it makes him. 

 

* * *

 

They repeat this pattern, making breakfast together, Tony running Peter round a series of chores until he flops into bed tired and blissfully numb to his feelings.  

And slowly it gets easier. He wakes up on his own, even has coffee waiting for Tony one morning when he comes downstairs. 

That’s not to say there aren’t hard moments. He is chased out of sleep by nightmares one night, the memory of dissipating into dust too clear, too real. He can’t sleep again after that, and when morning comes he can’t move. If he moves he’ll start thinking about everything that happened and oh god no he can’t start thinking about that he might never recover. Better to curl up and never move again.

Tony gives him about five minutes, then stands next to his head banging pot lids together until he gets up with a string of curses. 

So, they make something of a routine. 

Tony tells him to get up, to eat, to shower, to do chores, take a walk, read a book, go to bed. Despite Peter’s continued insistence that he really, definitely, is an adult now, he absolutely does not want this to stop. It is like he has put down a too-heavy weight and now he is floating along, light, numb, relieved.

And, as he eases back into himself, he has enough space to think about some of the things he’s said and done. Realise what he regrets.

After he’s finished clearing up lunch he finds Tony in the garage pulling apart a tangled lump of engine. 

“Hey, kiddo. Wanna help me rejig this thing to run on manure? I’ve got a theory about how to fix the smell issue -”

Tony stops when he sees Peter’s cloudy expression, his hands shoved in pockets, toe scuffing the dirt floor.

“I’m sorry I called you selfish.”

Tony’s smile falters. “Ancient history.”

“It’s your call to make to help like I asked or not. It wasn’t fair for me to lay it out like that and put you on the spot. It was _me_ being selfish for expecting you just to do what I wanted and not thinking about how it would be for you -”

And as Peter is talking he realises that this could just as well describe him parking up on Tony’s couch and refusing to move and god damnit even when he’s trying to get his shit together he’s leaving it scattered all over the place. 

Luckily, Tony cuts him off before he can get too far.

“Stop. Pete, you’re fine. I get it. I have form for being a selfish asshole.”

“But you weren’t -”

“I appreciate all this guilt you’re piling on yourself, but will you shut up and get your ass over here and help me? I think I’ve figured out how I can help you.”

Peter eyes the disemboweled engine. “With a poopmobile?”

“No - although if things are as big as mess as you said you might wanna take notes. A new fuel sources is always useful.” Tony pushes the engine to one side. “My actual idea is better than that.”

“What is it?”

“That would be telling.”

“Um… yes? How can I help you make this thing if you don’t tell me what it is?”

“By following my expert tutelage. Here.” He throws Peter some thick gloves and a welding mask. “There will be fire involved.”

“This feels safe.”

“Are you questioning my genius? So now I’m dumb as well as selfish.”

“Mr Stark -”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Deep breaths, kid. Now do what I tell you, and I’ll explain when you’re ready.”

“When I’m ready?”

“When it’s ready,” Tony corrects. 

Peter puts the welding mask on and Tony fires up the blow torch. 

“First one to blow something up wins.”  

 

* * *

 

So, they build.  

Their routine evolves to include mornings spent in the garage, Peter lifting, hammering, smelting, welding, wiring, at Tony’s instruction. Mostly Tony shouts instructions, half distracted by his screen where he’s coding something (Peter thinks he’s coding, for all he can tell it might just be a super elaborate crossword), while Peter tries not to set too many things on fire. 

In the afternoon Peter does chores, weeds the vegetable beds, repaints the peeling back door, even goes up on the roof against his better judgement to clean the gutters. One afternoon, Tony emerges from a store room wearing galoshes and more than the usual amount of plaid, with two long fishing rods leant against his shoulder.

“Change of plans. The yard is plenty tidy. Grab that bucket.”

He kicks a plastic bucket with his toe. Peter picks it up to find it full of worms. 

“Where did you even get these?”

Tony pauses. “I… good question. I wanted them then I looked and they were there. Huh. The afterlife is pretty convenient.”

Peter is still unsure how much of this Tony controls, and how much of it is just the strange quirks of a different realm. But he swears the weeds pop up again overnight, and the gutters clog when there’s been no falling leaves. The fridge replenishes itself, and they never run out of toilet paper. He would say the world is moulding itself around Tony’s convenience, but that would mean including his endless chores in that list and, okay yes this makes perfect sense. Of course the grass re-grows at speed if Tony wants him busy cutting it. 

They tromp through the forest to a pier he didn’t know about. It juts out into the placid water a good distance, but Tony sets up only five feet along and starts wrangling the rod and line. 

It does not go well. 

Turns out, neither of them know the first thing about fishing, or fish or rods or bait or casting, or really anything. It is only sheer good fortune and Peter’s lightening sharp reflexes that stop them falling into the water on more than one occasion. They manage to hook their own clothes, overhanging trees, dead floating branches: everything except fish. Once their lines are in the water and they’re standing side by side, holding their rods like they would have any idea what to do if they got a bite, Peter realises that fishing is also very, very boring. 

“Mr Stark, can I ask a question and please don’t get mad at me?”

“Better ask a smart question.”

“Why are you taking me fishing if you don’t know how to fish?”

Tony has chosen this moment to try to reel in his line and recast. He wrestles with the fine, near invisible length of line, only just dodging a flailing hook. 

Then catches Peter’s eye. Drops the rod.

Peter looks into the distance definitely not laughing not even one bit.

“ Are you bored? Stop. We’re stopping.”

“I didn’t say I was bored -”

“Give me the rod - look - I’m throwing it away. Done. It’s gone.”

Tony has thrown both their rods into the lake. Peter watches them float away in the gentle current. 

"Mr Stark, isn't it bad to litter?"

Tony turns on him with a dark look and Peter bursts out laughing.

"I guess it's not really littering if they're just gonna show back up in the house tomorrow."

"Did anyone ever tell you you can be an asshole?"

"Yes. Happy. A bunch of times. And you." 

“Well as long as we all agree." Tony picks up the half-empty bucket of worms and tips it into the soft earth at the foot of the pier.  "We can go throw a ball around, or something instead. I don’t have a great bank of father-son bonding activities from experience. Help me out here.”

Peter is about to say something about being from Queens and father-son bonding involving a lot less nature when his brain judders to a halt because he hears what Tony has said. 

Father-son bonding activities. Him. Tony. Bonding. Father-son.

Peter tries and fails to play it cool. “Yeah, um, throwing a ball around sounds good, sir, yes please I’d like that, thank you, yes.”

Tony laughs, but they walk back to the house and he finds a ball and catchers mitt somewhere and they throw a ball around standing on the rapidly re-sprouting grass Peter knows he’ll have to mow again tomorrow and it is  _ perfect _ . 

Until Tony says, “So when are we gonna talk about it?"

Peter tenses. "Talk about what?"

"About why you wanna stay dead with me."

"I'm okay, Mr Stark. I don't need to talk about it."

Tony throws the ball, watching him too closely.  "Okay, been  _there._ But a word from someone who's done a bunch more fucking up and recovering:  the thing I learned when I finally pulled my head out my ass and tried to get over my frankly craptastic mental health issues, was that talking is it. The big one. The path out of the darkness."

Peter catches the ball, looks down at its thick stitches and scuffs. Throws it back. “I'm fine. I just need a bit of a break.”

“I get it. It’s hard to grieve if you feel like you have to just carry on with your life around the holes people leave.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.” Peter is curt.

“You sure? Hows repressing everything been going for you so far?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Ouch. Thanks. Kinda thought I meant more to you than that.”

Tony throws the ball to him and Peter lets it fly past his head.

He has been doing such a good job of Not Thinking and now Tony is ruining it all. Kicking over his sandcastle foundations and playing in the mess. They were happy,  _he_ was happy, and now Tony goes and does this. He feels angry. Shuddering, boiling anger that wants to spill over and burn him down.

“You did. You do. But you l eft me.”

_ Like everyone leaves me. _

And just like that, the day is in ruins.

What he does not expect, is for Tony to cry. 

Tony turns away, pinches the bridge of his nose and blinks a lot. Then turns back, red-eyed.

“Dads leave. My dad died when I was in college -”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Peter surprises himself by talking over him, but then that anger is butting in, pushing words out of his mouth he didn’t know were waiting. “I  _ know  _ people die. My dad died. Uncle Ben died. I  _ know _ ."

“It’s - it’s part of life - ” Tony is reaching for the right thing to say. Fumbling it. 

“Break the cycle, that’s what you said. We were gonna break the cycle.”

And god damnit now Peter’s crying to and oh  _ god  _ this hurts. This is the awful bad vicious hurt he’s been staving off by not thinking, the wave he's built walls against. But now it is loose in him like a poison, corroding him inside to out. 

Tony looks lost, standing in the middle of the wide lawn. Adrift. “I tried.”

“Then you should have tried harder!” Peter tears off the mitt, hand sweat and prickling, throws it on the ground. 

Tony steps towards him, but Peter takes a step back.

It hurts. It hurts so much. Too much.

"Dads leave. I know. But you were supposed to be better.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long gap! I had edits to do on my debut ya novel (eek!) and then I got sick. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's read and commented, you make it all worth while!

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame ruined me so completely I have risen from my retirement to start writing fic again. Honestly, I am a wreck. I wanted to write a proper fix-it fic but this is all my brain would give me. Apparently I just needed to spew out my feelings into something kinda dark - but hopefully cathartic? Anything to spend more time with my boys.
> 
> I've got the whole thing planned out and most of chapter 2 written, so I'm aiming to post regularly! Please come share my misery.


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